This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.
Gerrit van Honthorst, The Concert, 1623, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund and Florian Carr Fund, 2013.38.1

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Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

The emergence of the Dutch school of painting in the early seventeenth century is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in the history of the visual arts. The Netherlands had only recently become a political entity and was still suffering from the effects of a long and arduous war against Spain. Yet the small republic’s success in gaining independence from a powerful adversary resulted in an enormous sense of self-esteem. The Dutch were proud of their achievements, proud of their land, and intent upon creating a form of government that would provide a lasting foundation for the future. They expressed pride in their unique social and cultural heritage in many ways, but most famously in their rich artistic traditions.

The collection of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings in the National Gallery of Art includes works by well-known masters of the period, including Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals, and Aelbert Cuyp. Now numbering more than 150 paintings, the collection comprises examples of the portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, marine paintings, still lifes, and biblical and mythological scenes that have made this school of painting one of the most beloved and admired in the history of European art.

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In this black and white horizontal photograph, people and horse-drawn carriages travel along and cross a rain-slicked, urban street. The photograph is roughly divided in half horizontally so the lower half shows a the wet pavement of a wide intersection, momentarily clear of people, where two streets meet in a T intersection. The upper half shows shops and buildings along a tree-lined street at the corner to our left, and along the long, cross street to our right. On the corner, clothing and other wares are displayed outside under an awning , while another display is covered over with a tarp. There are about ten people are on foot crossing the street toward us, while several horse-drawn carriages with large, spoked wheels, driven by caped and top-hatted men, pass through or are parked alongside the curb on the far side of the street. Some of the pedestrians hold up dark umbrellas, while only one man, without an umbrella, crosses the street walking away from us. All of the men wear dark suits and hats. The one woman crossing with the group wears a long skirt and matching thigh-length coat over a contrasting buttoned bodice. She holds up her skirts in one hand and her umbrella in the other. At the far corner, several tall multi-paneled kiosks with domed tops are papered with posters. Across the street is an uninterrupted row of buildings and shops with rows of shuttered windows above. A small triangular slice of sky can be seen between the building at the left and the trees lining the street; its reflection is mirrored on the wet street.

Scholarly Series:  Alfred Stieglitz Key Set

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945